I was trying to address Emily’s question about arguments against using pop culture. Maybe it’s all the political advertisements I’ve been seeing, but I seem to have internalized the idea that people making arguments against something rarely address the arguments people are making for it.

I don’t see a rational argument against what Pop Goes the Library proposes. But I can imagine an irrational argument, which is what I was referring to above: “You don’t have this thing I want you to have, and you do have this thing I don’t want you to have, therefore the method you’re using in developing your collection is wrong, wrong, wrong.”

Does anyone have a better answer for Emily? What’s the best case you’ve seen someone make against using pop culture to examine library services?

To what you say here, I say yes and no:

But someone who would like for us to use their method of collection development, or who would like us to have something in our collection that we don’t have, will argue that using and collecting popular culture and materials is a bad decision.

I hope we made it clear in the book that we don’t view collecting & promoting pop cultural materials as all or nothing, or as a black & white proposition in any way. We’re not advocating getting rid of the classics, or proposing zero wiggle room in a materials budget for something new & interesting (or old & interesting) that might have cult, but not mass, appeal. While we recognize that we sometimes have to make tough choices with regard to getting the materials our patrons want, we don’t believe in framing these questions as dichotomies.

Using only freely available resources, WorldCat has two Related Subjects for Pop Goes the Library (the book), Libraries — Special collections — Popular culture (20 hits) and Libraries and community (1,988 hits, though you should further refine these results based on your definition of backlash and scholarship).

Library, Information Science & Technology Abstracts (LISTA) is available for free through EBSCO. The descriptor “POPULAR culture” returns 120 results.

As far as an argument against, as with most things it seems to come down to a question of time and money. For most of us, using one method or collecting one type of material necessarily means not using some other method or collecting some other type of resource. Of course, most libraries have and will continue to have varied collections, and most of us will continue to use multiple methods for assessing those collections. But someone who would like for us to use their method of collection development, or who would like us to have something in our collection that we don’t have, will argue that using and collecting popular culture and materials is a bad decision.

Pop culture is an excellent lens for us to view our patrons and our communities. Has there been any backlash that you have followed to this kind of scholarship? What are the arguments against using pop culture to examine library services?